The storage and retrieval capabilities of warehouse systems are ever increasing so as to keep up to the demand of the ever increasing variety of products being made available to the general public. This increasing demand is being encountered in many fields such as pharmaceutical products; distribution of cosmetics; health and beauty aids; contact lenses; photographic films; automotive equipment; audio and video cassettes; books; and many more fields associated with consumer products. This ever increasing demand correspondingly creates a need to increase the storage and retrieval capabilities of the warehouse stocking these commodities.
To meet these ever-increasing demands, warehouse systems have been automated and, more particularly, are controlled by various computerized systems, one of which is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,501,528 (Knapp). The system of Knapp has shelves serving as storage locations within storage magazines to which the shelves are attached and in which are stored packaged items or products in a stacked arrangement. Each of the storage locations has an assigned ejector, responsive to commands initiated by computer, for retrieving the stacked products. The retrieved products are directed onto a conveyer, sometimes called a gathering belt, which transports the ejected items to a central station for collection. The prior art arrangement of Knapp is somewhat expensive because it requires an individual ejector for each individual storage locations. It is desired that a computerized system, generally referred to as an order selection system, be provided which eliminates the need for individual ejectors so as to reduce the attendant cost of the computerized order selection system.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a computerized order selection system wherein the number of ejectors needed to retrieve the products stacked in storage locations is reduced relative to prior art systems, while at the same time the capabilities of the system are increased so as to serve a larger number of storage locations and, thus, retrieve a larger number of products stacked in those storage locations.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a ejector or dispenser means that is responsive to a computer and reliably directs the dispensed or retrieved items from the storage locations onto a gathering belt so as to move the items to a central gathering station.
Still further, it is an object of the present invention to provide a system having dispensing means which are of both the stationary and movable types, and which may total in number from one to several hundred, with each of the dispensing means being independently responsive to a system controller.
Moreover, it is an object of the present invention to provide a system controller which immediately responds to an external device, such as a computer, that issues a selected order request specifying one or more products to be retrieved. The system controller of the present invention dynamically assigns space on the gathering movable belt in such a manner so that a plurality of selected order requests may be serviced simultaneously.
Further still, it is an object of the present invention to provide both stationary and movable dispensing means each having at least one vertically extending cog that cooperates with a slotted plate, upon which products rest, for accurately and reliably retrieving stored products that may be stocked in storage locations of the storage magazines of a warehouse.